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hydroponic plants receive all the nutrients they need for growing and fruiting from the growing liquid with all the nutrients dissolved in it. Hydroponic nutrients are available in great variety at specialized hydroponic stores. By the way, both chemical nutrients and organic nutrients can be used for the needs of hydroponic gardening. The only thing to remember is that organic fertilizers require more skills, time, and attention to use them effectively.

Hydroponic gardening allows anyone to grow organic vegetables, fruits, and flowers. A little research, learning and training, combined with enthusiasm, will soon bring the first success in hydroponics to you.

Today, there are many ready-made hydroponic systems available on the market. They are not too expensive, but such systems can really help to make an easy start in hydroponic gardening. For the beginning gardeners it is even recommended to choose simple inexpensive hydroponic systems – they are enough to give you the necessary experience. Of course, you can always build you own system to suit all your particular growing conditions and requirements, when you have enough experience and understanding of how hydroponic system works.

If organized properly, hydroponics gardening can even be easier than traditional plants growing. For example, with hydroponic system it is much easier and less time-consuming to test and maintain the necessary pH level in comparison to the regular soil gardening, where even the pH level testing can be a very challenging task, not speaking about maintaining it on the required steady level.  

Pest Control Approaches

Chemical horticulture fights off invasive pests with specific insecticides. They may be effective and fast-working at the beginning, but their long-term use may result in the raise of the insects resistant to the used insecticide. To kill those, more efforts will be needed, and the use of the different and stronger chemicals may be necessary. Moreover, killing enemies in the garden, any insecticide will inevitably eliminate predator insects (natural control bugs). And their lack will cause multiplying of the harmful pests. Consequently, a gardener will have to search for some other options to defeat the invasive populations.  

Organic horticulture, on the other hand, offers pests control through the studying and understanding their life cycles and peculiarities, as well as through the combined use of such methods as:

-           plants selection (pests and disease resistant plants are chosen for a garden);

-           companion plants growth (planting those crops that fight off pests and insects);

-           annual changing of the plants location to disrupt the reproduction cycles of the invasive species;

-           the use of row covers during the periods of pests migration;

-           employing insects traps to reduce the population of the pests;

-           increasing the number of predator insects and beneficial organisms.

In addition, organic gardeners usually allow some pests to live in the garden, carefully controlling their level though.

Organic horticulture employs the crucial principles of organic agriculture for the successful herbs, fruits, vegetables, flowers and ornamental plants growing. These principles concern the management of pests in the garden, soil composition and conservation, etc.

General Notes

Mulches, Double Digging, compost, Vermicompost, cover crops, mineral supplements and manures are the main constituents of the soil mixture in this kind of gardening in contrast to the commercial farming. Organic horticulture expects to minimize the risk of insects, fungi, and diseases development with the help of maintaining the high quality of the soil. Nonetheless, sometimes it is still necessary to use insecticidal soaps and sprays, pheromone traps, or other pest-control means, created especially for organic farmers.

Experts define five fields of horticulture:

-           olericulture, which stands for the production and marketing of vegetables;

-           pomology that means the production and marketing of fruits;

-           floriculture, which is the production and marketing of floral crops;

-           landscape horticulture that includes the production, marketing, and      maintenance of landscape plants;

-           and finally, post harvest physiology that studies and practices the preservation and maintaining of the quality of horticultural crops

All these areas can utilize the key principles of organic gardening.

Organic horticulture employs the methods and uses data, which have been collected for thousands of years. Generally speaking, this type of gardening is based on the natural, long-term processes and eco-friendly, global approaches, in contrast to horticulture, based on the use of chemicals that speed up the processes and aim at the separate results and reductionist strategies.

What makes hydroponic gardening different from traditional in-ground gardening is a soilless growing medium. No dirt! All plants require support, to be held up. This basic requirement is dealt with by soilless growing mediums which are inert, mostly non-organic materials.  Non-organic refers to the medium not being derived from living organisms, unlike soil, which is. There are a perplexing jumble of growing mediums available for hydroponic gardening. Generally speaking, these mediums are porous, light and coarse, allowing oxygen and nutrients to be easy accessible  to the plants roots.

Some of the most common used in hydroponic gardening are:

Coconut Coir ~ This is produced from the husk that surrounds the coconut shell. Made up of millions of tiny micro-sponges, it can absorb and hold up to eight times its weight in water, perfect for hydroponic gardening. It lasting three times as long as peat moss so is fairly sturdy. It is also called palm peat, coco, or just coir.  Some of the advantagesof this medium  for hydroponic gardening are better water retention and aeration.  The disadvantages of coconut coir are its breakdown after several uses and some drainage issues.  It is often mixed with other media to improve drainage for hydroponic gardening.

L.E.C.A / Lightweight Expanded Clay Aggregate ~ This is clay which has been heated under high temperatures until it puffs up.  It makes a very coarse medium as the clay balls are about 1/4″ across. Superb drainage, holds moisture, stays put and is reusable after sterilization to continue with your hydroponic gardening. These are just some of the advantages of this medium. On the downside, it doesn’t hold moisture as well as mediums like coconut coir and can be more costly.

Hydroponics gardening or growing plants in the growing media other than soil has been known to humans since ancient times. It is known that during the times of King Solomon, people practiced soil-less gardening, which later became known as hydroponic gardening.

The word “hydroponics” is derived from two Greek words: “hydro”, which means water, and “ponics”, which stands for labor. The principles of gardening without the use of soil were developed many and many years ago. Since then this type of gardening demonstrates certain valuable benefits in comparison to traditional growing plants in soil. One of the key benefits is that hydroponic plants grow 30-50% faster than plants, grown under the typical conditions in soil.

Traditional organic gardeners have always demonstrated certain level of contempt for hydroponics as the type of efficient and successful gardening. The followers of the traditional soil gardening consider hydroponics to be a kind of chemical gardening. Organic gardeners have always been pretty pessimistic as to supplying their plants with a balanced and calculated set of chemicals, which is a common practice among hydroponics gardeners. However, such an attitude of wide publicity and professional gardeners to hydroponics had changed after Steve Fox demonstrated his achievements in hydroponics gardening.

One of the key components of hydroponics gardening is growing media, an inert material, which unlike soil, does not supply any chemicals or nutrients to the plant. There are multiple types of growing media used today. The examples are sand, gravel, coconut fiber, perlite, and vermiculite. Amazingly, but even air can be used as a growing media for growing hydroponic cultures under the certain conditions.   

When Starting your own organic hydroponics gardening setup, you should remember that you will need to arrange two beds or layers in your hydroponic garden. The upper bed is, actually, a box to keep the plants in. This box should contain a growing medium for the plants to grow in. You can use perlite, coconut fiber, lava rock, Styrofoam pellets, rockwool or vermiculite for this purpose. The main thing about medium is that it should be able to keep a small amount of moisture for a long time. Experts assure that lava rock is best in this respect.

The lower bed is necessary to keep the water with the dissolved nutrients in it. The water is pumped with the help of an aquarium pump to the upper bed in order to water the plants. This procedure is repeated several times a day at equal intervals, being controlled with a timer.

Gardeners sometimes find it difficult to maintain the pH level of the water, its nutrition rate, and the ration of nutrients at the right level. These are, actually, the key factors, due to which a hydroponic garden or an organic hydroponics prospers. If these three crucial things in gardening are kept in balance with the help of Organic fertilizers, such technique of plants growing is called an Organic Hydroponic Garden.

Organic fertilizers are better for the plants than the chemical ones, as the latter are capable of burning the roots if used in higher concentrations.